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Formulation of Problem in Social Research

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Merton distinguishes three principal components in the progressive formulation of problem in social research. The components are: 1. The Originating Questions 2. The Rationale 3. The Specifying Questions.

Component # 1. Originating Questions:

The originating questions represent the beginnings of certain difficulties or challenges which, formulated in much specific terms would indicate where exactly the answer to them can be searched for, attain the status of a research problem. Thus, the originating questions constitute the initial phase in the process of problem formulation.

Originating questions are of various types. One class of originating questions calls for discovering a particular body of social facts. Such questions may express a doubt as to whether the alleged social fact are really facts. Needless to say that before social facts can be explained, it is advisable to ensure that they are actually facts.

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It is not unusual for scientists to provide explanations for things that never were. It is to be noted that, “if the facts used as a basis for reasoning are ill-established or erroneous. Everything will crumble or be falsified…. Errors in scientific theories most often originate in errors of fact.”

A recognition that social facts are not always what they appear to be, leads the researcher to raise questions aimed at discovering a particular body of facts. These questions, as has already been suggested, do not yet constitute the problem, although they do constitute an essential step in that direction.

Such questions are typically prompted by efforts to ‘explain’ social patterns which the researchers feel have not yet been established as genuine patterns. Such questions, sometimes called ‘fact-finding’ questions, hold a particular significance for social science.

This is because men are apt to assume that they know the facts about the working of society or polity without hardy investigation, because society and polity are after all their native habitat. Contrary to this assumption, not all plausible beliefs about our native habitat are essentially true.

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Another type of originating questions directs attention to the search for uniformities of relations between classes of social variables. An example of such a question is ‘what is there about the structure of societies that determines the kinds of deviant acts that occur within their confines?’

Such questions, it would seem, are formulated in terms of broadly delimited categories of social variables but they do not indicate specifically which particular variables in each class may be germane to the issue. Such questions usually derive from a general theoretical orientation rather than from a well-articulated theory.

It is quite evident that the originating questions differ in their scope as well as their degree of specificity. For example, in the discipline of sociology, a large number of originating questions are addressed to sociological variables within one or another institutional Sphere of society.

‘Does the degree to which management takes the teacher’s views into account in their decision-making process affect the degree to which the teacher takes the students’ views into account, in the class room?” Would be a question of this type.

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But such relatively specific questions concerned with a particular institutional sphere (e.g., the school system) may have a potential bearing on comparable organizations in which role incumbents may reproduce in their behaviour vis-a-vis a subordinate his experience in relation to his/her superior.

Originating questions of another kind are put in such a form that they can be addressed to a variety of institutional spheres, e.g., the questions, ‘Do the diverse social roles that members of different social classes are called upon to play have consequences more important for their personalities than have their class positions’? is one of this kind.

It should be borne in mind that neither the more general nor the more specific versions of the originating questions claim an exclusive value; each has its own value in augmenting knowledge of a particular kind.

In sum, the originating questions are of different kinds and emanate from different sources. Some are questions of descriptive fact, about observed empirical generalizations, some enquire into the sources of the observed patterns of social organization and others are concerned with their consequences, and so on.

Component # 2. Rationale of Questions:

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The originating question is just one component of the problem. Another is the rationale of the questions. Rationale is the statement of reasons why a particular question is worth putting across. The rationale states what will happen to other parts of knowledge or practice if the question is answered, i.e., how the answer to the question will contribute to theory and/or practice.

In this way, the rationale helps to effect a distinction between the scientifically consequential and trivial questions. In short, “the rationale states the case for the question in the court of scientific opinion.” The requirement of a rationale arrests the flux of scientifically trivial questions and enlarges the volume of important ones.

As a rationale for science as a whole, it refers simply to knowledge as a self- contained end. It ignores rather than denies, the possibility that a new bit of knowledge will contribute to practical concerns, viz., power, comfort, safety, prestige, etc.

The scientist may regard his deep interest in a question as a strong enough reason for pursuing it. But sooner or later, if the question and its answers are to become a part of the corpus of science, they must be shown to be relevant to other ideas and facts in the discipline.

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The practical rationale makes out a case for the question by pointing out that its answers will help people achieve practical values, i.e., health, comfort, productivity, etc. This is not to deny that a question raised mainly with an eye on the practical value of its answer may have important consequences for the theoretic system.

It is evident that a particular question may have import both for systematic knowledge and for practical uses largely, because the inquiry undertaken with an eye on any one has unintended consequences for the other.

(a) Theoretical rationale of a question may be considered as one worth asking because its answer would enlarge the scope of an existing theory or conceptual scheme.

Such a question would ask whether the existing ideas or concepts could be instructively used to understand aspects of phenomena that have not yet been subjected to examination in terms of these concepts or ideas, e.g., an examination of a particular rebellious ‘cult’ or movement within the theoretical frame of ‘Anomie.’

If the observations fit the conceptual scheme, it in effect gets enlarged or extended. This is precisely what is meant by bringing new set of facts within the grasp of an old one.

(b) Theoretical rationale of a question may direct the scientist’s attention to observed inconsistencies in currently-accepted ideas or findings and may prompt him to ask whether these inconsistencies are spurious for apparent rather than real.

Such questions invite re-examination of these ideas that initially led to the expectation. Are the ideas faulty, or the inferences drawn from them faulty? These questions about inconsistencies lead to posing of new problems for research.

In so far as much inconsistencies set the stage for instituting new problems, researchers are expected to be on the look out for ‘deviant cases’, i.e., cases that depart from the prevailing pattern. The deviant cases are then examined with a view to arriving at a single unified interpretation of the prevailing regularity and of departures from it. Properly investigated, the exception can improve the rule.

(c) A question may be considered well worth asking, because its answer is expected to bridge the gaps in the existing ideas or theory that do not account for aspects of phenomena to which they should in principle apply. In some cases, the gap may be bridged by ideas that are consistent with the existing theory, which is then seen as incomplete but not wrong.

In other cases, the new theoretical proposal might require some revision of the earlier theory. Merton cites as an illustration, the question of accounting for regularities of social behaviour that’ are not prescribed by cultural norms or that may even be at odds with these. The question expresses doubt for on the familiar assumption that uniformities of social behaviour necessarily represent conformity to norms.

That is, it identifies a gap in the narrowly cultural theory of behaviour which considers social regularities as culturally mandated. Yet as anyone would agree, many social regularities need not be culturally prescribed, e.g., men tend to have higher suicide rates than women, though cultural norms do not invite males to put an end to themselves.

Durkheim’s work on suicide partly bridged this gap. It was his contention that the designated properties of groups (e.g., the degree of their social cohesion) determine the rates of behaviour which are either not prescribed by culture or tabooed.

Once the theoretic gap is identified, it may spark off further questions, each with its distinctive rationale. There is no doubt, for instance, that much of patterned social behaviour is culturally prescribed. This is, after all, what we mean by institutionalized behaviour.

When this fact is made to confront the theory that social regularities are the indirect properties of social structure, we are at once in a position to pose a series of new questions such as, “How does a social structure produce new cultural norms prescribing behaviour that was previously unperceived resultant of it”? With this, the inquiry gets focused on the formation of norms in groups similarly situated in the social structure.

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Questions having a rationale consequent upon a gap in theory being identified, have a particular forces and significance when the gap is such as can be bridged simply by recasting the earlier assumptions. For example, a question may be raised about the assumptions that “Group equilibrium is a function of the extent to which group members conform to each other’s expectations.”

This assumption in turn is based on the idea that each act in a sequence of identical conforming acts will yield the same or increasing degree of appreciation or satisfaction to the actor and to other participants in the interaction system. These assumptions are put to question.

It can be argued in this reference that the same act will have different consequences according to the phase of the system of interaction in which it occurs.

That is, longer the sequence in which one person conforms to another’s expectation, the more will his conformity be taken for granted and the less will be the other’s reward for his conformity. On this view, the successive acts of conformity will yield smaller increments of reward.

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It is observed that in the course of its evolution, any particular discipline and its specialized fields have given vent to distinctive problems at each of its stages of development.

When for example, early modern sociologists were zealously engaged in trying to establish a distinct intellectual identity, they placed a heavy premium upon the autonomy of the field and largely ignored the methods, ideas and data from related disciplines. Durkheim, for instance, objected to and bred a school of objectors to the systematic use of psychological explanations of social phenomena.

Similar has been the case with special branches of the discipline of sociology, e.g., sociology of law, sociology of science or sociology of medicine, etc. in each branch of sociology for example, sustained emphasis on one range of problems has evoked after a time, corrective, emphases upon problems that had so far come to be neglected.

On occasions, this calls for the revision of analytical models or schemes that have led sociologists to concentrate on a restricted range of problems at the expense of other problems that the model tends to neglect.

As corrective emphases of theory develop, attention is redirected toward problems under temporary neglect. For example, the relation of population growth to human welfare, one of the oldest problems of population theory, has been periodically reformulated to accord with new concepts and to make it amenable to new methods of investigation.

Investigation of a range at problems has gone as far as it can with the use of existing concepts. The concepts useful for a time in the past, may now prove to be inadequately differentiated, typically introducing the problem of devising appropriate classifications.

The concept of role, for example, proves inadequate to deal with many problems so long as it has to depend on the vernacular for depicting social positions, e.g., father, leader, physician, etc.

Such inadequacies give rise to the problem of devising a standard set of concepts or categories which can be used to describe any role or set of roles in a way that does adequate justice to its complexity and permits systematic comparison with other roles. The solution of an inadequacy is a pre-condition to getting on with a broader programme of research.

Component # 3. Specifying Questions:

This is the stage of culmination in the process of formulating a social research problem. The originating questions, differ in their degree of specificity. Some may be quite diffuse; some relatively more specific.

In their most diffuse form, they simply register a dimly felt sense of ignorance, a general concern with ‘something’ that seems to be in need of solution but this ‘something’ is not clearly or sharply identified. In somewhat more focused form the originating questions point to a class of variables that may be involved in bringing about an observed state, without specifying the pertinent variable in that class.

At this stage, the problem has yet to be fully instituted. The originating question must still be recast to indicate clearly the observations that will provide an answer to it.

This objective of transforming the originating questions into specifying question with an eye on a series of observations in particular concrete situations warrants a search for empirical materials in reference to which the problem can be investigated fruitfully.

Although, sometimes, the investigator stumbles upon these materials by some lucky coincidence quite often, he selects them by deliberate design realizing their strategic character in arriving at the answer or the solution to the problem.

In sociology, we may cite cases where answer to certain antiquated problems were attempted by investigating them in concrete situations that strategically exhibited the nature of the problem.

Inquiry into the modes of interdependence among various social institutions was greatly advanced by Max Weber’s decision to study this general problem in the specific instance of the connections between ascetic Protestantism and modern capitalism.

Weber realized that the concrete phenomena, i.e., protestant ethic and modern capitalism, had a strategic character in as much as it afforded in a miniature but representative form an essential understanding of the general nature of inter-institutional dependence.

No concrete situation or observation, however, is strategic in itself. It is a certain insight the researcher brings to the situation that makes it strategic. The signal importance of this phase in the definition of a problem has been widely recognized.

But it presents difficulties all its own. We can only illustrate here how as final phase in the formulation of a problem, a general originating question can be transformed into specific one so as to indicate the types of situations that will afford the strategic observations to answer them.

It is well-known that social organizations have latent functions. The originating question may ask “What are latent functions or the unintended consequences positive and negative of the present ‘rational’ organizational structures for the clients?”

The hospital system being such an organization, would afford a strategic site for investigating this question. The question in its more specific form may be phrased thus: “What are the unintended consequences of the rationally organized hospital system for the care of the patients?”

It should be clear that not even a beginning of the solution can be found so long as the questions remain in such an undifferentiated or different fused form. The question must, therefore, be broken down into several specifying questions related to particular aspects or organization of hospitals and their consequences for the care of patients, (e.g., hierarchy of statuses, formal rules etc.).

These simple, pointed, focused and empirically verifiable questions are the final resultant of the phased process we call the formulation of a social research problem. It is only such specific questions that provide answers which in their synthesized form afford the solution to the problem. This solution, has implications for theory, systematic knowledge and/or for practice.

The social determinants of sociological problems. Many problems in social sciences are brought into focus by influences external to specific discipline itself. A brief prelude to this was provided when we considered the practical rationale of questions.

Changes in the patterns of social life may give a new or renewed significance to a broad subject of sociological inquiry.

A renewed interest in the study of face to face groups, for instance, is attributed mainly to the preponderance of formal organizations in contemporary society and a growing need for such societies for face to face ‘primary’ groups in modern society characterized by instrumental orientations.

It can hardly be assumed, however, that all social and cultural changes will automatically induce or reinforce interest in a particular sphere of inquiry. When changes in a society come to be defined as a social problem and are occasions for acute social conflict, then only do such spheres begin to attract interest.

For example, sociologists paid scant attention to the institution of science although it was recognized as a major dynamic force.

A limited renaissance of interest in this field occurred only when a spate of limited historical events subjected the institution of science to stress, e.g., in Nazi Germany. Also, the state imposition of secrecy upon scientific work in many societies had the result of violating the values and moral conviction of men of science and of curbing the flow of scientific information.

Historical events can affect the value-commitments of sociologists and lead them to work on a restricted range of problems. Merton suggests that the Great Depression and the social strains it created in its wake, led any American sociologists to study problems of social disorganization.

The social organization of the inquiry itself may affect the selection of problems. The choice of subject-matter as also the ways in which problems are construed has been demonstrated to be related to the recruitment pattern and working conditions of researchers.

We were engaged in considering the steps involved in the formulation of a problem for social research within the general area of a discipline, drawing the illustrative materials from the discipline of sociology. How difficult it is to be able to pose a significant problem for social research.

This is really speaking the first and perhaps the most crucial step in the social research process. Many a researcher is stuck at this point and look for guidance in the matter of posing the problem. This perhaps is the stage where others can help him the least.

A question so often asked is, “where to look for a problem?” The answer can only be, “Your own mind, where else?” It is a sensitive mind that alone experiences a problem or a difficulty, in a particular situation.

This difficulty or curiosity, arises because some new observations do not fit into the person’s (researcher’s) scheme of ideas about the true nature of being and becoming or because the diverse bits of knowledge acquired by him do not fit together meaningfully or something cannot be explained on the basis of what he knows or finally, because there is some element of challenge in a practical situation.

It is quite understandable, therefore, that the problem is something that the researcher has to experience from within. It arises, in a way, from what one already knows, and what, on this basis, one would like to know if he were to satisfy his creative impulse.

One who does not know much will hardly have problems. It is in this sense that ‘ignorance is bliss.’ A person may have acquired wrong ideas, but on this very basis, he may experience problems which will ultimately change his initial ideas.

Systematic knowledge acquired by the individual, his training and personal talents, all contribute toward sensitizing him to see the difficulties and pose pertinent questions of real import.

Cohen and, Nagel rightly point out that “the ability to perceive in some brute experience, the occasion for a problem and especially a problem whose solution has a bearing on the solution of other problems, is not a common talent among men. It is mark of scientific genius to be sensitive to difficulties where less gifted people pass untroubled by doubt.”

Raising new questions, new possibilities or regarding old problems from new angles requires a creative imagination and reflects a real advance in science.

The mythical tale about Newton testifies to this. Apples have been falling and must also have fallen on the heads of people before Newton’s time but it was the sensitive Newton alone who raised that strategic question which sounded the beginnings of the law of gravitation.

We may now list some of the conditions that experience has proved to be conducive to formulation of significant research problems.

(1) Systematic Immersion in the Subject through First-hand Observation:

The researcher must immerse himself thoroughly in the subject-area within which he wishes to pose a specific problem. For example, if the researcher was interested in the broad problem of juvenile delinquency, if would serve him well if he visited remand homes, juvenile centers, juvenile courts, the families of the delinquents and the localities where the incidence is high.

He should try to know at first-hand the various aspects of the life of delinquents by interviewing them, their family members and supervisors, etc., by observation; no experience is more rewarding in terms to getting a deep feel of the situation.

This exercise helps a great deal in suggesting to the researcher the specific questions that may be posed for the study to answer. This process is known by various names, e.g., pilot survey, preliminary survey or exploration.

(2) Study of Relevant Literature on the Subject:

To be able to pose a problem, the researcher must be well-equipped to experience some difficulty or challenge.

This in turn would depend upon how well the researcher is conversant with the relevant theories in the field, reports and records, etc.; this would help the researcher to know if there are certain gaps in the theories (his problem then will bridge these) or whether the prevailing theories applicable to the problem are inconsistent with each other or whether the findings of different studies do not follow a pattern consistent with theoretical expectations and so on.

All these will afford occasions for institution of research problems. This is also an aspect of exploration.

(3) Discussion with persons having Practical Experience in the Field of Study:

This is often known as an experience survey, which again is an exercise at exploration. Administrators, social workers, community leaders, etc., are persons who have a store of rich practical experience in different fields of social life.

These persons, therefore, are in an effective position to enlighten the researcher on different aspects on the fields of his propose study. Such persons represent in a nutshell, years of experience, hence their advice, comments, information and judgements are usually invaluable to the researcher. They can help and guide him to sharpen his focus of attention on specific aspects within the broader field.

Important as these conditions are in formulating a social research problem, they hide a danger. In social science as elsewhere, habits of thought may interfere with the discovery of the new or the unexpected, unless the preliminary observations, reading sad discussions are conducted in a constantly critical, curious and imaginative frame of mind.

Social Research begins with a problem or a difficulty. The purpose of the inquiry is to find a solution of this difficulty. It is advantageous and desirable that researcher should propose a set of suggested solution or explanations of the difficulty which research purports to solve.

Such tentative solutions or explanation, formulated as proposition are called hypotheses. The suggested solutions (formulated as hypotheses) may or may not be correct solutions to the problem; whether or not they are in the task of inquiry to test and establish.